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Masterworks of German literature translated specially for this site

Wednesday 23 April 2025, by Ray (German Studies)

All of these outstanding texts (61 stories, 80 poems, a letter and an essay) – many of which are litle-known outside of the German-speaking cultural sphere – have been translated specially for this site, either because available English translations of them are not free of copyright or because they’ve never been previously translated into English.

All of the translations done for this site are copyright-free.

No.	Date	Author	German Title	English_Title_____	Genre	Synopsis/Commentary__________________________________________	words
1	1808	Heinrich von Kleist	Die Marquise von O...	The Marquise of O...	novelette	On page 1 of this stark investigation of the feminine condition in a rigid society ruled by pitiless moral strictures, the young widow Marquise of O. finds herself in an unexpected condition with no idea of how or why this situation came to be, and courageously puts an ad in the local paper proposing marriage to the (unknown) person responsible for this state of affairs. We then flash back, in rapid succession, to a violent military assault on the fortified town of which her father was the governor, an equally violent assault on her own person by marauding soldiers, a rescue by a heroic young officer who spends the rest of the story pursuing her with all his considerable means, and the ups and downs of her relationships with him and with her loving but very obdurate family. – Bold and intense in content and innovative in form, this remarkable story seems as up-to-date today as it must have appeared avant-garde in its own time.	15,585

2	1811	Heinrich von Kleist	Die Verlobung in St. Domingo	The Engagement in St. Domingo	novelette	In the midst of the campaign of extermination of the thousands of white-skinned people left on Haiti (then called St. Domingo) after the successful uprising of slaves there in 1804, a young officer desperately seeks shelter and food for his small company of civilians in a wayside house, where he is lured into a very false sense of security by the family of the local killer-in-chief whose abode it is and who is absent for the moment. We follow the ups and downs of the attempts of the officer to survive in the face of apparently-hopeless odds with the help of the very seductive daughter of the house — but in the context of apocalyptic ultra-violence that permeates this dramatic story, we know that there will not be a happy end and there isn’t (the hero ends up blowing his brains out in the same way Kleist himself did a few months after the story was written).	13,484

3	1812	Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm	Hänsel und Gretel	Hansel and Gretel	fairy tale	The parents of Hansel and Gretel are so poor that they are unable to feed them and abandon them to their fate in the depths of a forest. But the children discover an old witch’s home in the forest, who promptly imprisons them with a view to eating them up when they become a little fatter. But the children have courage and resources and she comes to a bad end indeed.	2,266

4	1812	Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm	Rapunzel	Rapunzel	fairy tales	A poor woman hungers after the rapunzel lettuce than growing in a neighbour’s garden and sends her husband to steal some of it for her. But he’s confronted by the neighbour, who’s in fact a witch, who allows them to have as much lettuce as they want but with a proviso. When the mother brings a little girl into the world the witch reclaims the girl for her own, calls her Rapunzel and hides her away in a tower. But later a handsome prince passing by falls in love with her on hearing her beautiful singing.	1,390

5	1812	Ludwig Tieck	Der Pokal	The Mysterious Cup	short story	A tender love story featuring notably a magnificent young woman, her ardent but too-poor lover and an alchemist who tries very hard to sort things out for them with his unusual and very strange instruments. – A striking portrait of the sociological lifestyle of those days not as different from our own as one might think, from one of the key figures of the German Romantic movement.	6,247

6	1813	E. T. A. Hoffmann	Don Juan	Don Juan	short story	A traveling salesman discovers that his hotel room leads directly to a private lodge in the neighbouring theatre, where a performance of Mozart’s opera “Don Juan” is about to be given. Delighted, the music lover rushes over to the lodge, where not only is the performance exceptional, but where he also has a quasi-supernatural encounter with Donna Anna herself, the outraged and distressed victim of the infernal charmer Don Juan. The story enables the future author of The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, a distinguished composer himself who adulated Mozart to the extent of adopting ‘Amadeus’ as one of his forenames, to convey his enthusiasm for Mozart’s celebrated masterwork and to provide the reader with his own insights into its profound significance.	5,024

7	1815	Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm	Das blaue Licht	The Blue Light	fairy tale	A soldier who has served his king for many years is dismissed without pay when he has become too old and full of wounds. Penniless, he searches for work and is hired by an old woman, who is in fact a witch, to dig up her grounds. The next day she sends him down into a pit to recover a blue light that she has lost there, but when he sees that she has evil intentions he stays in the bottom of the pit, where he discovers the amazing powers of the blue light that enable him to get his revenge on both the witch and the king.	1,758

8	1817	E. T. A. Hoffmann	Das steinerne Herz	The Stone Heart	novelette	Court Counsellor Reutlinger organizes an elaborate festival on his grounds every three years to which everyone in the area, young and old, is invited – on the condition that they put on the clothes and accoutrements of the year 1760, a particularly important moment in the Counsellor’s life, as he explains to a distinguished lady of his own age some forty years afterwards as they stroll through his grounds among the revelry – and resolves a lifelong dilemma in doing so. A charming tale imbued with melancholy, mystical forebodings and existential questioning, in the elegant prose of the immortal author of Nutcracker and the Mouse-King and Views on Life of the Tomcat Murr.	9,307

9	1817	Clemens Brentano	Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl	The Story of the Good Gaspard and the Pretty Annette	novelette	A remarkable old woman of eighty-eight who has walked for a very long time to come to the Duke’s residence to plead for mercy and forgiveness for her grandson Kasperl and her goddaughter Annerl, both of whom have come to a sad end, recounts in an irresistibly authentic way that cannot fail to charm the most blasé reader the gloomy and frankly gory not to say ghastly destiny of her loved ones, and the narrator, who has become devoted to her cause and does everything in his power to help her, infuses the tale with an added dimension of drama and even humour, in spite of the black destinies of the good Kasperl and the pretty Annerl. – This unusual tale, that had a resounding popular success when it was first published in 1817 and that has continued to be read ever since, is Clemens Brentano’s best-known story.	12,703

10	1821	E. T. A. Hoffmann	Auszug aus “Lebensansichten des Katers Murr”	The Love Song of the Tomcat Murr	short story	The account of his love affair with the lovely Miesmies by the very gifted tomcat Murr, who had been taught to read and write by his erudite master and who had then proceeded to write his autobiography – an episode from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s masterwork “The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr .	2,317

11	1826	Wilhelm Hauff	Die Karawane	The Caravan	short story	The introductory tale to his Almanac of 1826 about a Caliph and his Vizier who were transformed into storks by a magician, at their request, in order to be able to understand the language of birds and animals, but then forgot the magic word that would bring them back to human form because they had started laughing – contrary to the magician’s instructions – when they realized what nonsense the various birds and animals were saying to each other.	5,325

12	1853	Adalbert Stifter	Granit	Granite	novelette	An account of life and death and nature in the high alps in upper Austria long before modern life changed the ancient ways in those remote parts, recounted with strong poetic overtones by the narrator as he remembers a striking incident from his youth in that magnificent region. – A charming, captivating and finally very moving reading experience by the Austrian writer, painter and teacher Adalbert Stifter (1805-1868), one of the leading figures of the Biedermeier literary movement that played a long-lasting role in the literary life in the German-speaking countries during the greater part of the 19th century.	12,421

13	1853	Adalbert Stifter	Begkristall	Mountain Crystal	novella	Two children go over into the neighbouring valley high up in the Austrian Alps to visit their grandmother on the day before Christmas and get lost on their way back when a terrible snowstorm unexpectedly hits the whole region and covers up not only their tracks but all the recognizable landmarks that usually guide them on their way. – A story about life in the mountains, a story about the diverse and ever-changing environment in the mountains, a story about Christmas in the mountains and the intensity by which it was celebrated there in those times, a splendidly-recounted story with universal significance about children and communities and love and death that just cannot leave a dry eye in any reader’s eye at the end.	18,708

14	1874	Gottfried Keller	Kleider machen Leute	Clothes Make People	novelette	This famous story by the Swiss writer Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) was first published in 1874 in the second volume of his collection of stories The People of Seldwyla about the mores and adventures of the people of the mythical but somehow very typical Swiss town of that name. It recounts – brilliantly – in a very humorous vein the adventures of a penniless, unemployed tailor whose only possession in the world is a set of rather nice clothes that he has fabricated for himself, thanks to which he is mistaken for a visiting young lord when, after hitching a ride from a passing four-horse coach, he stops off in the neighbouring town of Goldach, where he is plied with fine food and wines and spare clothes and accessories of all sorts by the good people of that wealthy town. And where he is presented in a very favourable light to a most memorable person indeed, the lovely and very forceful daughter of one of the town’s leading citizens, a certain Nettchen who sort of takes over the story and the reader’s interest too as soon as she enters the scene. – In addition to its quite hilarious comical aspects, it’s a fascinating portrayal and a subtle parody of the mores and foibles of the wealthy Swiss merchants and business men who had already in the earliest parts of the century – we are in the thirties or forties of that momentous century, during the period of the author’s youth – risen to prominence throughout that peaceful land in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the explosion of world trade.	16,152

15	1900	Arthur Schnitzler	Leutnant Gustl	Lieutenant Gustl aka: None but the Brave	novelette	Terrific, you are plunged into the (fascinating) mindset of those pre-WW1 days as if you were there. An intense "stream-of-consciousness" account that passes entirely in the mind of the Lieutenant throughout, more than twenty years before James Joyce rendered the technique celebrated in the Anglo-Saxon world with Molly Bloom’s meditations in Ulysses.	12,518

16	1900	Stefan Zweig	Vergessene Träume	Forgotten Dreams	short story	An elegant lady relaxing on the terrace of her magnificent mansion on the Riviera is called upon by a man she had known in her younger days. About to leave for America, he has come to ask her for an explanation of why she had decided to marry into money rather than take her chances with him back then. – Stefan Zweig’s first published story, a remarkable achievement by the 19-year-old author.	2,175

17	1900	Stefan Zweig	Praterfrühling	Springtime in the Prater	short story	A young woman in an elegant building in the most select part of Vienna is quite beside herself with annoyance because the new gown that she has ordered for Derby Day has failed to arrive on time, obliging her to miss the fancy event. Finally she decides to put on her oldest dress and just go out for a walk on that lovely spring day. When she’s admired by a young student who finally works up the courage to ask if he might accompany her she accepts out of a spirit of adventure, and they have a most enjoyable outing in Vienna’s great Prater park. The simplicity of it all quite enchants her and one thing leads to another and so on. – This subtle, sensitive tale was the author’s second story, published when he was only 19.	4,513

18	1901	Stefan Zweig	Im Schnee	In the Snow	short story	Word comes to a Jewish community celebrating Hanukah in a small town in medieval Germany that a large group of religious fanatics are on their way with hate in their hearts and blood on their hands.	4,379

19	1901	Stefan Zweig	Zwei Einsame	Two Lonely Souls	short story	A disabled lad limps home at the end of the day’s work in his factory, left behind by the other workers because of his handicap. He stops when he hears sobbing by the roadside and tries to console another social outcast, a female worker at the factory who has been brutalised because of her ugliness.	1,424

20	1904	Stefan Zweig	Die Liebe der Erika Ewald	The Love of Erika Ewald	novelette	An intense exploration of the emotional impulses of a young pianist who falls hopelessly in love with a seductive violinist who almost but not quite succeeds in seducing her. A remarkable achievement for the 24-year old author.	15,802

21	1904	Stefan Zweig	Der Stern über dem Walde	The Star Over the Forest	short story	The waiter François is suddenly stricken with a slavish worship for the elegant countess Ostrowska while serving her in an elegant Riviera hotel. The following period of blissful adoration and loving service brutally comes to an end when he learns that she will be leaving the next day.	3,422

22	1906	Stefan Zweig	Das Kreuz	The Cross	short story	A French officer is cut off behind enemy lines after an ambush during the Napoleonic War in Spain and desperately tries to survive amid the immeasurable hostility of the population.	3,811

23	1907	Stefan Zweig	Die Gouvernante	The Governess	short story	A young girl tells her sister that she’d heard their governess crying in her room, and when they investigate they overhear the governess telling their cousin Otto that she’s expecting a child. The two girls rapidly discover a dark side of life that they’d never suspected.	5,481

24	1908	Stefan Zweig	Scharlach	Scarlet Fever	novelette	A young medical student comes to Vienna and has enormous difficulties adjusting to life in the big town, not only because he is under-developed, immature and shy but also because he’s quite overwhelmed by the force of the extroverted and quite domineering older student in the next room, not to speak of the latter’s outspoken and somewhat aggressive girlfriend. But one day the woman nest door, to whom he had never paid any attention, comes to him in tears pleading for his help as a medical student to save her young daughter who had come down with scarlet fever. He does his best to help the child’s doctor care for the young thing, sitting up night after midnight to help her, even though scarlet fever can rarely if ever be overcome by grownups… A story that starts off slowly about a perfectly-normal young man from the provinces quite unsure of himself in the hostile urban environment of a big city, that builds up, thanks to the magic of the author’s smooth, incisive prose, into a dramatic existential quandary that can leave no reader with a dry eye, quite impossible.	21,052

25	1908	Stefan Zweig	Geschichte in der Dämmerung	Twilight Story	novelette	A fifteen-year-old English boy on holiday in the grand Scottish castle of his relatives wanders into the grounds late at night, fascinated by its somewhat eerie atmosphere. Where he’s abruptly accosted in the dark by a passionate young woman who vigorously embraces him before fleeing. Unable to identify his mysterious aggressor he lurks under the same tree again the next night and has another encounter with the ghostly girl, and thereafter desperately seeks to identify the culprit and to deepen their relationship. – A life-changing encounter splendidly recounted by the twenty-six-year-old future author of The Fantastic Night and Letter From an Unknown Woman.	12,035

26	1913	Stefan Zweig	Angst	Fear	novella	A well-to-do married woman who has faulted with a seductive young pianist is aggressively blackmailed by a coarse young woman who threatens to denounce her to her husband. The blackmail is increasingly successful and the lady is overcome with fear and anguish and finally sees only one fatal way out of her dilemma. – One of the author’s most celebrated works.	22,840

27	1913	Franz Kafka	Das Urteil	The Judgement	short story	A subtle shocker written in Kafka’s detached, almost otherworldly way, where a man-to-man conversation between a father and son brings out long-suppressed thoughts and attitudes and hitherto-hidden facts, and quasi-instantaneously triggers off a final catastrophic conclusion to what had seemingly been a straightforward and even banal relationship. A fictional counterpart to Kafka’s long, real-life letter to his own father that was published posthumously as Letter to Father.	4,287

28	1914	Stefan Zweig	Die Mondscheingasse	Moonbeam Alley	short story	The narrator hears German being sung by a woman in a tavern in a southern French town and when he enters he sees the singer shouting in his native tongue at a fellow-countryman, who tells the narrator the tragic story of his unrelenting passion for the lady.	6,936

29	1914	Robert Walser	Am See	By the Lake	short story	Thoughts while sitting on a bench under a tree looking out on a lake under light rain.	369

30	1915	Robert Walser	Die Nacht	The Night	short story	The magic of a promenade up a mountain on a night that “was so mild and so soft ! No kitten could snuggle up to you more tenderly and delicately. A mother caresses her innocent little darling in just such a loving way.”	426

31	1915	Robert Walser	Im Wald	In the Forest	short story	Thinking about a loved person while standing all alone among the trees in a forest at night.	412

32	1915	Robert Walser	Die Stadt	The Town	short story	Remembering “how beautiful our town was on spring evenings.”	492

33	1915	Robert Walser	Das Frühjahr	Springtime	short story	Feeling like a little child again surrounded by the joyfulness and the fiery colours of new spring.	407

34	1915	Robert Walser	Sommernacht	A Summer Night	short story	A solitary young man reading a book in his room becomes conscious of the special atmosphere of the nighttime down in the streets below.	406

35	1915	Robert Walser	Abendspaziergang	Evening Promenade	short story	A dreamy promenade on a glorious Sunday evening.	697

36	1915	Robert Walser	Frau Scheer	Mrs. Scheer	short story	A particularly powerful and poignant portrayal of the poverty-stricken author’s unusual relationship with his wealthy and very solitary landlady.	4,766

37	1916	Robert Walser	Die Untergasse	The Lower Street	short story	A powerful account of the vibrant life on a working-class street in the low part of town.	1,232

38	1916	Hermann Hesse	Schön ist die Jugend	Youth is Beautiful	novelette	Hermann Hesse, the celebrated author of Siddharta and Steppenwolf, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947, was also a masterful writer of short stories, of which this delicate, charming account of a young man returning to his birthplace is an outstanding example.	14,423

39	1917	Robert Walser	Der Spaziergang	The Promenade	novella	A wonderful account of one seemingly-normal-but-inwardly-rather-zany man’s thoughts while walking around his neighbourhood in (peaceful and neutral) wartime Switzerland, a masterpiece!	19,312

40	1917	Robert Walser	Heimkehr im Schnee	Homecoming in the Snow	short story	Melancholic introspection on his way back to his home town on foot through deep snow.	1,143

41	1917	Robert Walser	Sonntag	Sunday	short story	Listening to the chimes of Sunday bells while admiring the view of the town and the lake down below.	590

42	1918	Franz Kafka	Ein Landarzt	A Country Doctor	short story	An elderly country doctor is called at night to come to the bedside of a suffering young man ten miles away, but the mission is surrounded by difficulties from the start : there’s a snowstorm raging outside and his only horse has just died from over-exertion in the freezing winter. But although powerful horses and a groom miraculously appear and the passage to the sick man’s hut mysteriously takes place quasi-instantaneously, things nevertheless go from bad to worse both for the sick youth and the doctor himself, whose very existence and raison d’être are put into grave question. A short but impelling flash of semi-abstract strangeness.	2,492

43	1919	Franz Kafka	In der Strafkolonie	In the Penal Colony	novelette	A visiting European researcher is invited by the military commander of a penal colony to witness the execution of a soldier condemned for insubordination, an execution that is to be carried out in a very special manner by a very special machine that has performed the same task very many times in the past. But times are changing and the extraordinary former commander of the camp who invented this amazing machine is no longer there and the values epitomised by the machine and the zealous officer who serves it are on the wane. That is the setting for one of Kafka’s best stories that manages to combine big themes (ethics and punishment, the death penalty, the fascination it has exercised on the mass public throughout the ages, machines and the their uses and misuses, the military mindset, tradition and modernity …) into a seemingly simple story seemingly simply told that somehow keeps the reader in thrall throughout and long afterwards too.	11,461

44	1919	Franz Kafka	Brief an den Vater	Letter to Father	letter	The long letter that Kafka wrote (but never delivered) to his father to explain to him in great detail why he (Kafka junior) had always had so much difficulty communicating with him. An extraordinary document, told from the heart by a son who may not have been as good a talker as his domineering and self-assured father but who sure knew how to put words together in a flowing, expressive way. – A prose masterpiece.	18,280

45	1919	Stefan Zweig	Der Flüchtling. Episode am Genfer See	The Refugee. Episode on Lake Geneva	short story	At night on Lake Geneva during WW1 a fisherman finds a fellow paddling a makeshift raft. It turns out that he’s a Russian soldier who’d been brought to the Western front and had been trying to make his way back to his homeland.	2,523

46	1919	Robert Walser	Die Kleinstadt	The Small Town	short story	Imagining an ideal small Swiss town.	998

47	1920	Robert Walser	Sonntag auf dem Land	A Sunday in the Countryside	short story	An account of a quite perfect Sunday visit to a pastor’s residence in the countryside, quite perfectly recounted.	951

48	1920	Franz Kafka	Ein Bericht für eine Akademie	A Report to an Academy	short story	An ape that has learned human ways reports to an assembly of scientists on the use or rather misuse that mankind had made of his talents. A moving and powerful account of his determined, obsessive striving to fundamentally change his essential condition and acquire a form of freedom in spite of the coarseness, stupidity and callousness of the humans into whose world he has been unwillingly thrust.	3,684

49	1922	Franz Kafka	Forschungen eines Hundes	Investigations of a Dog	novelette	A solitary dog recalls the investigations he had undertaken in his youth to understand the whys and the wherefores of such questions as food, hunger, language and communication with other members of his community. In the course of his investigations he had encountered strange and quasi-mystical phenomena and had never quite achieved his goals of understanding, but even in his old age he has never stopped meditating on the findings of his investigations. Transposed into a different, surrealist kind of world – a world not only of dogs, but a world without humans where dogs are at the top of the evolutionary ladder – this is an intense exploration of a solitary being frustrated by his lack of understanding of the world around him and of his fellow creatures, an investigation that no doubt mirrors some of the most essential preoccupations of the author of A Hunger Artist, The Burrow and The Metamorphosis.

50	1922	Stefan Zweig	Brief einer Unbekannten	Letter from an Unknown Woman	novella	A well-known novelist returns home after a holiday in the mountains to find a long letter awaiting him there from a woman he had once known but quite forgotten. She on the other hand has never forgotten him, for good reasons as the letter explains. – A very intense, very moving reading experience. A true masterpiece, perhaps Stefan Zweig’’s finest work.	15,858

51	1922	Stefan Zweig	Phantastische Nacht	The Fantastic Night	novella	We follow the events in one day of the life of a well-off and very blasé reserve officer in Vienna in June 1914 as he quite by hazard finds himself at the races in the Prater, the great Viennese public park, and watches with a detached eye the excited behaviour of the crowd during the races. His day and his whole existence are thrown head over heels when he starts paying attention to an alluring person next yo him and he rapidly goes through a life-changing experience that ends very late that night. A memorable account of the glories of a summer pre-WW1 Viennese day, of the festive atmosphere on a Sunday at the immense Prater park, of the passion of a large crowd at a major horse race, of the interplay between the different strata of society, and of one man’s existential quest for meaning in his life. One of the master’s finest masterpieces.	23,355

52	1922	Franz Kafka	Der Bau	The Burrow	novelette	A fascinating exploration of an undefined creature’s psychosis as it wanders around its enormous underground complex worrying about how to protect the domain from being discovered and invaded by enemies and, towards the end, about strange sounds that it hears constantly and anguishing about what menacing creature must be making them. – Brilliant and profound and disturbing, surely one of the best things that Kafka ever did.	14,149

53	1922	Franz Kafka	Ein Hungerkünstler	A Hunger Artist	novelette	Written in 1922 and published as the title story in the first collection of his stories to be published after his death two years later at the age of forty, this account of a man’s determined and obsessive drive to surpass himself in the art of fasting explores the theme of eating in a calmly compelling way tinged with Kafkaesque strangeness and intimations of the inutility of ambition, achievement and acclaim.	3,875

54	1925	Stefan Zweig	Die unsichtbare Sammlung	The Invisible Collection	short story	An antiquarian travels to a small town in Germany during the period of ultra-inflation after WW1 in search of a former client of his gallery who had over the years amassed a fabulous collection of drawings.	5,508

55	1926	Arthur Schnitzler	Spiel im Morgengrauen	Cards at Dawn aka: Night Games	novella	A young officer in Vienna decides to help a former comrade in need by risking his meagre funds in a card game with fellow officers and a selection of respectable local citizens. A decision that leads inexorably to drama and downfall culminating in a final existential crisis that plunges him into the very depths of his soul and a final understanding of just what kind of a man he really is. This engrossing tale is a fascinating account of the mores, values, atmosphere and lifestyles in the capital of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire in the period prior to the outbreak of World War I. This late work is perhaps Arthur Schnitzler’s crowning masterwork.	30,121

56	1927	Stefan Zweig	Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau	Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman	novella	In this story within a story, both on the theme of deep-running sensual passions overriding all other considerations, subtly enlarged to encompass the overwhelming passion of gambling, a woman recounts a decisive moment in her life when she had tried to help a young nobleman whose passion for the roulette table had lead him to the brink of self-destruction. – sensual passion over-riding all other considerations in the context of high-flying passion for the roulette table at Monte Carlo, soberly recounted with sensitivity and in-depth psychological penetration: a powerful, moving, thought-provoking story, a masterpiece.	23,361

57	1927	Stefan Zweig	Die Hochzeit von Lyon	The Wedding in Lyon	short story	An account of a night of a love match in the face of imminent death during the ferocious Stalinist-type repression of enemies of the state during the 1794 Terror period of the French Revolution that powerfully and vividly recreates the atmosphere of those tragic days.	3,564

58	1934	Stefan Zweig	Unvermutete Bekanntschaft mit einem Handwerk	Unexpected Acquaintance with a Craft	novelette	Returning to Paris after a two-year absence, the narrator decides to just do nothing other than soak up the atmosphere of the boulevards and watch the crowds passing by there. Which enables him to identify a pickpocket and to study the fellow’s expert technique. When he follows the man on his peregrinations to the central auction house at the Hotel Druot the man passes into action and the narrator himself gets involved. – A very Maupassant-like episode impregnated with the atmosphere of the time, the excitement of uncovering the secrets of a timeless profession and the author’s innate empathy with the underdogs of life.	13,832

59	1939	Stefan Zweig	Ein Mensch, den man nicht vergisst	An Unforgettable Man	novelette	The narrator remembers Anton, a penniless man who could always be found wandering about his little home town just helping people, doing odd jobs and accepting in payment only what he needed to get through the day, nothing more.	1,832

60	1940	Stefan Zweig	Die Eroberung von Byzanz 29. Mai 1453	The Conquest of Constantinople May 29, 1453	historical essay	In this brilliant historical essay Stefan Zweig recounted in his clear, penetrating style the drama and the intensity of one of the most significant events in world history, the campaign of the young twenty-one-year-old Turkish Emperor, the Sultan Mahomet, to overcome the determined resistance of the thousand-year-old Byzantine Empire, then centred in the historic centre of the Eastern Orthodox faith, the ancient city of Constantinople with its magnificent cathedral and its impregnable series of fortifications. We all know how that battle ended, but many of us were unaware of the spectacular details of that epic and world-shaking event, and how close it was to turning out differently, as Stefan Zweig recounts in this remarkable text, first published in an English translation in New York in 1940.	8,642

61	1941	Stefan Zweig	Die spät bezahlte Schuld	The Debt Paid Late	novelette	A middle-aged woman writes to an old friend to recount how during a brief holiday in the Tyrolean mountains she’d encountered an actor that they both had utterly worshipped in their adolescence and who’d since fallen on hard times. She reveals to her old friend how the actor had played a key role in an absolutely crucial moment in her life, and how she finally paid back the debt she owed him.	9,866

62	1942	Stefan Zweig	War er es?	Did He Do It?	novella	The narrator has retired with her husband to a lovely spot on a small hillside overlooking an abandoned canal in the countryside near Bath in England, and she recounts their relationship with their young neighbours, an extraordinarily warm-hearted fellow and his wife, to whom she’d given a puppy for company as the couple had remained childless. The dog becomes the central figure in this increasingly-dramatic story as he assumes ever-greater mastery over his owner until the arrival of a long-awaited baby relegates the animal to a secondary role that the arrogant, very clever and very powerful dog absolutely refuses to accept. Written in a straightforward, clear, uncomplicated style at the peak of the author’s powers during his stay in England in the thirties en route to his exile in Brazil, this little-known but in-depth study of two most unusual personalities – one of which is a dog as memorable as any of Jack London’s four-footed villains – was only published during the author’s lifetime in a Portuguese translation in Rio de Janeiro in 1942. The original text was first published posthumously in Leipzig in 1987.	12,737

63	1946	Albrecht Haushofer	Moabiter Sonette	Sonnets from the Prison of Moabit	80 poems	An extremely rich, profound, intense, introspective, erudite, moving series of 80 sonatas written in the Moabit prison in Berlin by a 42-year-old professor of geography specialized in the Far East who had been condemned to death for having been associated with the attack on Hitler’s life in July 1944, and who was murdered without trial, covertly at night in a vacant lot, by an SS detachment at the end of April 1945, only two days before Russian tanks stormed the city.	9,391

64	1981	A. E. van Vogt	Der ideale Tag	The Perfect Day	sci-fi story	Lee Baines is a solitary bachelor who spends his evenings alone before the TV set feeling cynical about the world in general and TV programs in particular. And one night he sees a university professor talking about his new time-traveling machine and asking for volunteers who, unlike the mice he has been using so far for his experiments, could come back and report on the result of his experiments. That night Lee decides to go for it : to go back to the day of what was for him his perfect wedding day – and night – only to have woken up the next morning to find that his beloved Marsha had gotten up sometime during the night and gone away, never to be seen again. Nothing could be more important for Lee – and by this time for the reader too – than to be able to find out the why and the where and the with whom of that very special day and night, which he finally manages to do, with the help of a very gifted and unusual professor and his incredible apparatus. This excellent tale was one of van Vogt’s last works, and is the only one by the great Canadian science-fiction writer never published in English – it was only ever published in the language of Goerthe in the November 1981 issue of a glossy German anthology Tor zu den Sternen (“Gateway to the Stars”).	6,235
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